


A Playful Cat

by kittywiz



Category: Black Cat (Anime & Manga), Sword Art Online
Genre: A lot more characters from both, Bounty Hunters, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Gen, I will add more tags as this continues, Im basically playing hard and fast with canon in both, They sweep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-02 00:48:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15785547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittywiz/pseuds/kittywiz
Summary: It starts at the end.Or really at the beginning if you think about it.It starts with a new future and endless possibilities stretching in every way towards the horizon.Truly though, it starts at Annete's counter at around twelve in the afternoon with almost no money in their pockets.So, it starts like any other day really.But not quite.The year is 2022.





	A Playful Cat

A glass hit the wood of the counter with a dull thud, the amber liquid inside washing up the sides of the cup before seeming to settle in place.

A lighter clicked. 

Turned off.

Sven slammed his head into the table next to a wrinkled newspaper with a groan of self pity.

Annete raised an eyebrow, cigarrete lit in her mouth before she turned to the short figure in a black dress standing against the wall, their nose in a book. Smoke spiraled a grey trail upwards and a fan spun lazily on the ceiling. Besides the three of them, there was no one else in the café.

"Dead end again?" Annete blew out a a cloud of grey smoke.

Eve slowly nodded her head forward, without looking up from what she was reading.

Sven groaned brokenly into the polished wood of the bar counter with all the grace of a wounded buffalo.

"Seems to be an awful many these days", Annete drawled, her eyes half closed. 

Eve hummed.

"Any of the marks good?" Sven mumbled while moving from where he had been slouched to sit up in his seat.

"No, don't seem to have too many coming in either."

Sven peered at her over the glass in front of him eyes narrowing.

Annete took another drag before gesturing at the sparse wall of posters behind where Eve was sitting, "That's almost everything that came in within the last week."

Eve looked up.

"Everything?", Sven asked eyebrows raised.

"Maybe one or two bounties got taken but other than that", Annete shrugged, "we haven't been getting that many lately."

"Everything?"

Annete stabbed her cigarette into an ash tray underneath the counter sighing. "Everything." Eve looked back down into her lap.

A clock ticked in the corner of the store and Sven looked at it, one hand mashed against his cheek, his elbow on the counter. He raised the glass to his mouth. 

Swallowed. Once. Twice.

The minute hand seemed to hesitate before ticking forward to 12:59 in the afternoon.

He set the glass down half-full.

"Where's Train?", Annete asked.

"He took on a job", Annete raised a blonde eyebrow, "I know, seems unlike him but we're low on funds and he's just trying to be useful."

A snort.

Both Annete and Sven turned to where Eve had practically thrown her face into the pages of a red backed book. The cover had a picture of a rabbit and the words Alice in Wonderland written in embossed cursive across the front.

Her ears had gone red.

Sven let a corner of his mouth tilt upwards and reached for the glass.

Annete huffed.

The clock grinded forward another minute, hesitated, and ticked.

1:00.

\--

Public transit, Train thought to himself, had come a long way. 

Not long enough though, he grimaced.

'Use the train', Sven said. 

'It's cheaper than buying gas', Sven said. 

'Please don't do anything illegal or hurt someone because they're sitting or sleeping and you're standing', Eve said. 

'I need the bike, sorry bro', Woodney said.

'We need more money' Sven said.

'It's cause of that large ass, black hole of a stomach you have', Sven said.

'It's not good to eat that many calories and not burn it off', Eve said. 

A balding, middle aged man in a black suit and red tie shuffled in place behind him, theit knuckles white as the train seemed to tilt towards the right. Train kept a light grip on the rubber cord above him and tried to keep a neutral expression on his face. A muffled cry of someone's child came from somewhere in the back rows towards the next car.

Across from where he was standing, a kid sat in one of the many occupied seats, a navy blue backpack held tight in one hand, and a smartphone with headphones snaking upwards through their black hoodie in the other. Their screen every so often featured pictures of a guy in a white lab coat with glinting glasses standing next to a large machine while holding a black helmet. The words 'genius' and 'inventor' flashed across the screen.

Train felt a chill of unease run down his spine and stared out the window into the pitch black of the tunnels.

The ground hummed beneath the soles of his feet.

The train lurched to the left. 

The bald man fell forward into Train, their shoulder bumping into his chest before quickly moving away to touch at their arms as if they had been burned. They reached up with the hand that didn't have a death grip on one of the loops keeping them in place to cough into and resolutely avoided looking at Train's face.

Train's right eye twitched.

A dull ding camd over the intercom and yellow digital text appeared over the two exits on either side of the passenger car as a female voice spoke over the speaker, "Next stop, Okachimachi Station next stop, Okachimachi Station." 

The view through the windows had remained dark for all this time, as if stained with blank ink but slowly a white light seemed to brighten a corner until the front of a station came into view. A couple people who sat on various benches got up once the train seemed to approach. One person in a green jacket near the stairs kept typing away furiously at his phone, refusing to move even as the train pulled in. 

The yellow text above the doors disappeared briefly and the numbers 12:04 slowly slid onto the screen.

"Please watch your step", the voice droned as the train slowed. It lurched forward once and the the bald man stumbled, nearly tripping, before making his way closer to the exit.  
The doors gave way with a sound of air releasing and Train stepped out following the kid that had been on his phone in front of him before walking up the stairs and onto the streets. 

Today was one of those odd days, where the weather didn't seem like it had an idea of what exactly it was supposed to be today and decided to be everything at once. The sky was a grey blue color, and clouds were whipped across its surface like spun sugar  left out to dry in odd places. Train pulled the leather jacket he had put on closer to himself.

He had about maybe half an hour to get to where the Dicey Café was before Andrew came down on him for being late. Or Kathy. 

Either of them angry felt like a bad prospect to have in his future.

Train winced and rubbed at the back of his head where a phantom ache of a hand coming down on his skull seemed to develop before speedwalking to catch up with the crowd crossing the street at the signal.

It was probably better then, Train thought as a crow flew by overhead, that he shouldn't give them a reason to be angry with him.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, erm hi? Haha, I don't really know what else to say.  
> This is just an idea or a fancy that I have been wanting to play with because, even after all this time, Black Cat remains one of my favorite anime and manga series of all time. It may be because it was one of the very first, but I honestly have no idea.  
> That being said, I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of this fic. See you next time :)


End file.
